Manifestation from Desperation

The most striking examples of manifestation that I have experienced have been born out of desperation. I asked because I was desperate. Sometimes I asked because I was experiencing feverish delusion. I don’t typically ask for too much. But when I’m desperate I’ll reach out. How about I learn to ask in the good times too. Maybe my desperate call was less filtered less doubt riddled.

I was around thirty and struggling somewhat in life. I hated my job, I had very little money, my life had all the direction of a helter-skelter. Not surprisingly my self-confidence was in the mire.

My girlfriend (now wife) was living and working in Bangkok. I went to stay with her for a while. This was around 2002 and we were staying in an area called Soi Ari. I loved my time in Soi Ari, the food (duck noodle soup was a favourite), the smells, the people. I attended Thai language classes during the day and would meet my girlfriend from her work in the evening, from where we would go and get some street food and maybe a drink or two before heading home.

Some evenings we would rent a movie from the rental store on the corner and lie on the bed watching the movie. Our accommodation was a single roomed condo with no room for a sofa, so our bed was our sofa.

I was happy, truly happy, but I was living on dwindling savings and increasing credit card debt. Financially I should have been heading home to get a job, but emotionally I couldn’t leave. I felt like I was finally healing after all these years. The feeling of healing was addictive, I always needed just a bit more healing.

As my money was running out, I had figured that my bank would increase my credit card limit but alas they refused to increase it, and thus I was well and truly fucked.

I cried. I had fucked up badly. My girlfriend and I tipped all the money we had on to the bed and it came to a couple of hundred pounds. Just enough to get me home and survive for a couple of days, but I had no job to go back to and no idea when or from where additional income would come.

I flew Emirates, stopping over in Dubai. In Dubai I stayed with a friend for a few days. As he greeted me at the airport, I told him I didn’t have a penny to my name, and he very kindly offered to pay for everything during my stay. That was a fun time. I felt like those people on Banged Up Abroad who get to have a holiday in the Sun before getting down to the serious business of trafficking drugs. They are having a great time but in the back of their minds they can’t escape the thoughts, the dread, of the reality to come.

We drove around in the searing Dubai heat in my friend’s open topped Porsche (safe to say he was doing somewhat better than me), listening to the Robbie Williams album ‘Swing when you’re Winning’ – his car, his music choice not mine. We went to nightclubs, lunched at golf clubs, spent some time at the beach and in the souks. My friend was doing very well for himself and the contrast between his success and my failure was stark.

After two or three days I was leaving Dubai, heading back to a reality that made me feel nauseous. I checked in at Dubai airport. ‘Would you like a window seat sir?’

‘No thank you, I prefer an aisle.’

‘It’s a business class upgrade sir.’

‘In that case I would love a window seat, thank you.’

That was the first and last time I have been upgraded.

When I got back to England I anxious. I was running on adrenaline knowing that I had almost no money. Asking to borrow money from friends or family is not in my repertoire. But I swallowed my pride and asked a friend who lent me a couple of hundred pounds. That bought me a couple of days, maybe a week.

I checked my email and there, manifested out of desperation, was an email from a company asking me if I was interested in a vacancy they had. Interested? You fucking bet I was. Several years previously I had put my curriculum vitae on a job website and until this particular day I had not received one enquiry. Manifested out of desperation was my opportunity to get back on track.

So, from that horrible low of tearfully tipping up the piggy bank on to the bed, I had experienced a luxury break in Dubai, a business class flight and now a work opportunity had presented itself. Of course I got the job. I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog if I hadn’t. It felt like a restart in life. The end of my old life of irresponsibility. The beginning of my new life; career, marriage, kids, a home.